I would imagine the next set of hats to go would be from the Classless Update, because 1) they're next in line if working by update and 2) they're Valve made, and therefore cutting them off from the system won't affect actual contributors. The hats from the War Update would be questionable though, since there were only 3 in that update. Is it enough to warrant a separate "retirement phase"? I would've honestly thrown them in along with the Classless Update.

After those 2 updates, that's when a problem arises, because that's when we hit the First Community Wave Update, featuring hats made by community members. They would no longer be able to earn money for their hats because the hats will be taken out of the store. However, they would probably get one last burst in sales if that were to happen, from all the people desperate to get their hands on some "historical items".

The only problem I have with hat retirement is all the hypocrisy associated with it. People would frown if they happened to find/craft most of the Original 9. But when the hat retirement was brought up, they ended up becoming happy to get them, thinking they found something similar in value to better hats. When was the last time you saw someone overjoyed to craft a hat considered as crafting mesh?

I would say that hat retirement was just a test valve did to check the waters on how the community reacts towards it. They also have Dota 2 which is entirely funded by cosmetics so it is more sensible to see it more often there than Tf2

Valve can't just remove community made hats, without causing a ♥♥♥♥storm bigger than the Vox Diabolus. Anything else, made by valve, is free game, but its gonna be hard to remove the community hats.P.S i dont hate any hats LOLOLOLLOLOLOL i think the Diabolus looks okay